This is interesting. Sian Beilock has looked at why we don’t do so well when “the heat is on”.
The two things that caught my eye were this:
We all have this idea that more intelligence is always better, but I have shown that it’s the people with the most working memory who are most susceptible to poor performance.
We had people do mathematics problems that could be solved by working through a complicated algorithm, or by using a shortcut. In low-stress situations with lots of time, those with more working memory were likely to use the algorithm, while those with less were likely to see the shortcut. Under stress, people with more cognitive horsepower suffered because the pressure taxed their working memory. For people with less working memory – who were relying on shortcuts that didn’t tax their cognitive system in the same way – pressure didn’t have a negative impact.
Those with more cognitive horsepower are also folks who tend to over-think and analyse. We found that over-thinking can be detrimental, that it’s better if an activity you have performed thousands of times runs on autopilot.
and this:
How did you find out that paying less attention can improve performance?
When we have practised a speech to perfection, or taken hundreds of golf shots, performing well involves paying less attention rather than more. This idea that concentrating harder will help doesn’t pan out. We put skilled golfers on our putting green and ratcheted up the stress by everyone watching them, or putting money at stake. If the golfers were distracted by listening for a specific word from a list we played, they performed better than if we had them think about their swing.
All of which fits in quite well with ideas of flow and slow